


Shit Hits the Fan

by Alliterative_Albatross



Series: Better Love [6]
Category: Narcos (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Danger, F/M, Fluff, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Plot, Slice of Life, javi finally admits his feelings (in a very vague Javier Peña way)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:00:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29565777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alliterative_Albatross/pseuds/Alliterative_Albatross
Summary: “Javi, get out of there now!”Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Fate comes knocking for Javier Peña.
Relationships: Javier Peña/Reader, Javier Peña/You
Series: Better Love [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073882
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	Shit Hits the Fan

Javier’s just slamming the car door shut when the satellite phone in the console rings. 

He sighs, glancing at his watch. He’s got five minutes before he’s due to meet with this new informant. Javier always tries to be early for these first meetings, but Bogotá lunch traffic had been particularly congested today, and he’s running later than he likes. Not _late,_ late, but cutting it fine. It always helps put a contact at ease if they think they are the center of the DEA’s universe.

And Javier really, really wants this information on La Quica. 

The phone cuts off just as he reaches for it. 

Well, fine. Javier steps out of the car again, gritting his teeth at the delay.

Whatever it is must not be important.

But then the phone is ringing again, jarring the silence, loud and insistent. 

Javier groans in frustration, pitching his entire upper half though the open driver’s side window to grapple with it. “Peña,” he growls once he’s finally got it to his ear.

He’s startled to find that it’s your voice on the line. “Where are you?” 

Javier frowns. You sound… off. There’s none of that familiar, teasing warmth infusing your tone. Your words are clipped and carefully chosen, like you’re doing your damndest to keep your voice level.

It sends something swooping in Javier’s stomach. 

“Heading to meet an informant,” he says, all thoughts of the time dissolving from his mind. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

_“Where,_ Javi.”

Your voice tightens. It’s not a question. It’s a fucking demand.

“Palermo.” Javier straightens, extracting himself awkwardly from the window. He turns to cast his gaze around the street he’s parked on, a sudden whisper of a threat prickling hot beneath his skin. “A little diner off Calle 45. Why?”

There’s a quick shuffling from your end of the line. Javier imagines you pouring hurriedly over a map, pinpointing his position.

“Get out of there now.”

Your quick, terse words tell Javier everything he needs to know. He stiffens, automatically reaching for the pistol that’s tucked into his belt. “Ears -”

“No, Javi, _listen_.” You’re pleading now, that carefully contained panic leaking into your tone in a way that claws at Javier’s insides. “There are _sicarios_ tracking your position. They mentioned you by name. I think it’s a set up. _You’ve got to leave now.”_

Cold horror douses him. Again, Javier’s eyes sweep his surroundings, landing on two parked vans that he hadn’t noticed before, one on either side of the street. In front of him, a leather clad man in a ball cap approaches, walking with quick, determined steps that spell danger. He’s reaching into his coat pocket. 

“Oh, fuck.”

* * *

“Oh, fuck.”

Through the phone, you hear the familiar pop, pop, pop of gunfire. Then static. 

“Javi!” you shout desperately, panic squeezing your heart in a vice grip.

Silence meets you. The line is dead.

With trembling fingers, you place the office phone back in its cradle. The world seems to spin beneath your feet, your vision narrowing until all you can see is your hands, your shaking, useless hands pressed heavily against the surface of your desk. 

Funny, you’ve never noticed the pattern in the wood grain before.

‘Javi, Javi, Javi, Javi,’ your brain sputters over and over and over.

“Ears.” A gentle hand on your shoulder is enough to send you jumping, your heart lurching in your chest, sending a terrible, zinging bolt of electricity all the way to your toes.

It’s Torres. You blink at him. His eyes are dark, concerned. “Breathe, Ears.”

Oh. 

Now that he’s reminded you, it seems that breathing is all you can do. You force yourself to slow the fuck down, automatically falling into that practiced pattern. Three seconds to inhale. Hold. Three seconds to exhale. Hold. And again. And again. 

You’re not sure how long you do that, stare unseeing into the middle distance with Torres’ hand a firm weight on your back, grounding you, but eventually, your brain blinks back online, and you relive your conversation with Javi, flinching a little at the memory of gunfire. 

The sound is unmistakeable. 

“Oh, god,” you whisper beneath your breath. One hand comes up to tuck your hair behind your ears, never mind that it’s braided back today. It’s just a habit, a gesture of comfort. 

Something Javi does often.

“Are you okay?” Torres asks in a voice that is far too soft. For the first time, you’re aware of the eyes of the Centra Spike team. Each of them are glued to you, their faces twisted in expressions that border the terrible line between horror and sympathy. 

“No,” you say to Torres. No sense lying, any idiot can see that you’re not. Honestly, it’s a stupid fucking question, but you can’t fault him for asking it. 

You take one last deep, shuddering breath and place your headphones on your head. “Play it back,” you say in a voice cold like steel. 

There’s nothing you can do to help Javi now. But you’ll be damned if you sit here crying like a little bitch while he’s -

You cut the thought off.

Torres is still hovering at your shoulder. “Ears,” he says gently, careful as if you’re made of spun glass. Fuck him. “Are you sure you don’t need a minute?”

You glare up at him with all the venom you can muster, punctuating each word with deadly precision. “Play it. The fuck. Back.”

You’re going to get an ID on that voice, or you’ll die trying.

* * *

Javier winds back through that fucking lunchtime traffic, leaning heavily on his horn, careening between lanes with just the smallest hint of space available. One of the vans is tailing him, but it’s several cars back, hindered by its awkward size. It’s much less suited for weaving through the busy streets of Bogotá than his Bronco.

He’s lost the other. 

Javier doesn’t have the brain capacity to think on that right now, though. All of his attention is focused on surviving, on getting back to the Embassy as quickly as possible. 

Thank fuck you’d caught him while he was still near the car. The leather clad man had opened fire just as Javier had met his eyes. Javier’s only saving grace was that he was close enough to leap back into the driver’s seat and peel away, his tires squalling loudly against the rutted asphalt. He’s never been more grateful for the ostentatious, armored Bronco that the Department of Justice had shelled out for him. Today, it’s peppered with tiny little dents all down the driver’s side, the only remnants of a spray of bullets that absolutely would have killed him had he been in any other vehicle. 

“Fucking hell,” he curses, slamming his brakes with a force that nearly shoots him into the windshield. His chest slams against the steering wheel, and he plummets backward, breathing heavily. 

Okay, to be fair, he had been trying to run that light. He thinks it’s justified, though, given the circumstances. 

Javier takes a moment to just breathe, rubbing at his aching sternum with his right hand. He’s a sitting duck here, exposed with no means of escape.

A dark car with heavily tinted windows eases up beside him. Javier’s pulse speeds, and he ducks down in his seat, knowing that the glass of his armored vehicle is far more vulnerable than its reinforced steel sides.

Slowly, the passenger side window of the car inches down. Javier glances from the corner of his eye, wondering if this is where he meets his end.

Something clenches in his chest at the thought. He wonders if he’d have been this afraid even a year ago. It’s your face that swims to the surface of his mind in these tense moments, your wild smile, your vivacious laugh, your body, warm and soft beneath his.

Javier doesn’t want to think of what it would do to you, if you lost him. 

Beside him, an elbow leans casually out the open window of the car. Javier twitches, can’t help but look over and meet the eyes of his would-be assassin. 

Arturo Delgado stares back at him, lifting his AK-47 briefly in view before hiding it away again. 

Javier forces himself to hold Arturo’s gaze, breathing heavily out his nose. Something passes between them, a mutual understanding. Javier remembers from many previous raids with Arturo that he loads all of his guns with full metal jackets. Sure, they don’t mushroom, which is bad news if you’re a shit shot and wanting to do max damage. But Arturo isn’t a shit shot, Javier knows from watching. He’s an excellent marksman, and when he aims, he aims to kill.

A full metal jacket pierces almost anything. A bullet shield. A tac vest. Armored glass. 

Arturo nods to him, just a slight dip of his head, and Javier blinks back, his heart thundering erratically in his chest. 

Then the light turns green, and Arturo’s vehicle pulls away, turning left, the opposite direction of the U.S. Embassy. 

Javier huffs a deep, broken sigh. Behind him, impatient drivers are honking their horns, and he startles, pulling forward toward the east, toward safety.

He doesn’t remember the last twenty minutes of the drive to the embassy parking lot. He only realizes that he’s there, parked in an unassuming space between two flashy sport cars. 

Javier sags against his seat, dropping his head back and sucking down sharp, heaving breaths. Now that the danger is passed, his panic response hits him full force, and Javier slumps forward, clenching his trembling fingers into fists in his lap, shutting his eyes against the onslaught of every scenario that could have unfolded, had any one variable shifted. 

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

A distant, rational part of him is familiar with this phenomenon. The human body is equipped for survival, to filter relevant information and act on it, and it only. But the life-saving rush of adrenaline has to stop sometime, and when it does, the fear sets in, the higher brain booting back online with a vengeance. It analyzes the situation, determining with stunning alacrity the danger that it’s just faced. 

Javier hates this part, the fallout, the come down from an adrenaline high. He knows that there’s nothing to do but ride it out, so he rests his forehead heavily against the patterned leather steering wheel and focuses on his breathing, allowing his brain to spin, contemplate, rationalize, do its thing.

His fingers and toes prickle, the remnants of stress hormones focusing there for whatever primitive, biological reason. Javier grits his teeth, shuts his eyes tightly as he processes what’s just happened to him.

_Sicarios,_ you had said. 

And that’s what Javier had assumed, too, right up until he’d come face to face with Arturo Delgado.

And honestly, that’s worse. Horrifying, actually, had Javier been in a place to put two and two together. 

Well, he is now. Arturo Delgado is the Castaño brothers’ right hand man, their chief of operations in the capital. After the death of his father, Emilio, Arturo had abandoned his military career and fallen in full force with Los Pepes. He’s their assassin and weapons specialist, the guy they send out for hits in Bogotá while the brothers center their attention on Medellín. 

The pieces fall together to create a sobering picture. Javier casts his mind back to two weeks ago, to telling Don Berna that he hadn’t found Fernando Duque. 

Dammit, Javier hadn’t given a flying fuck about the lawyer’s fate beyond what information he could provide regarding Escobar’s location. But the _idiota_ had stolen away with his child, taking the kid with him, and Javier is sick of being responsible for the senseless killing of innocent people. 

He wouldn’t condemn a child to death for the sins of his father. 

So he’d hidden Duque himself. 

That plan had backfired spectacularly. Thanks to Trujillo, the motherfucker, Los Pepes had found Duque anyway, and he and his son had met their grisly end in the trunk of his ex-wife’s stolen car, their bodies twisted and brutalized nearly beyond recognition. 

It had eaten Javier alive, his responsibility in their deaths. Had he been up front with Berna, maybe the kid, at least, would have been spared. 

Maybe.

Javier takes another deep shuddering breath. He’s been wanting out of his arrangement with Los Pepes for a long time now. Pretty much from the beginning, if he’s being honest. Guilt claws sharply at his heart with each interaction, with every fresh body found strewn across the streets of Colombia, with every carefully coded piece of notebook paper that he slips to Don Berna. 

Javier’s conscience, such as it is, has been gnawing at him for a long time. 

He glances at his trembling hands, imagines them stained with the blood of hundreds of innocents, imagines the heartache he’s generated all across Colombia. Children grieving their fathers, mothers mourning their sons, wives widowed, families broken, all because of him. 

Fuck. If there’s a hell, Javier Peña is going to bust it wide open, and he can’t even regret it. 

Hell is what he deserves. 

He sits like that for a long moment, staring blankly at hands guilty of a thousand indirect atrocities, resting clean and unassuming in the gentle afternoon light. 

He grits his teeth, yanking his gaze back to his lap. If there’s a silver lining to this clusterfuck of a day, it’s that his partnership with Los Pepes is indisputably over. Arturo could have killed him today, but he’d clearly chosen not to. Javier wonders why. 

Something niggles at the back of his addled mind.

Arturo is Ana’s brother, and Ana Delgado is your friend. Javier loathes that friendship, despite that he knows how much comfort you both glean from it. It’s dangerous for you and for him, and a dark, selfish part of Javier wishes that that fucking bomb had separated you and Ana irrevocably. 

It would certainly make his life easier.

But Javier sees how much Ana means to you, so he does his damndest to ensure that you have no inkling of his clandestine relationship with Arturo and his group of vigilantes that have terrorized Medellín, and now Bogotá, for the past few months. It’s obvious that that you worry about Javier, and that knowledge gnaws at him, but he’s kept details of his work intentionally vague, and you tend not to ask too many probing questions. 

Javier’s grateful for that. 

But now the shit’s hit the fan. Arturo had clearly been employed to put a hit on Javier, but for whatever reason, he hadn’t followed through. Javier wonders what that will mean for your relationship with Ana. Ana is your only friend in Colombia. She’s good for you, and Javier would never want to do anything to jeopardize that, despite how desperately he wishes things had shaken out differently. 

But now, with Arturo clearly intending to kill Javier should he step one toe out of line…

Fuck. 

It’s a tangled web that just screams disaster waiting to happen, and it’s all Javier’s fault. If he’d just kept his head during that one awful month without you, had thought rationally instead of with his reeling, unstable heart, none of this would ever have happened. 

And you would be safe. 

Javier pounds his forehead against the steering wheel, drumming in time with his racing heart. His stupid, shortsighted choices have put you directly in the line of fire, and you don’t even know it. Part of Javier wonders if he should tell you, come clean about Los Pepes and his role in it, but he can’t stand the thought of the light dimming in your eyes as you look at him, of watching you draw away as you realize that he’s directly responsible for all of the violence and grief that chokes Bogotá. For the loss of your apartment, even. 

Javier’s nearly lost you once, and it had broken him. He can’t stand the idea of going through that again. 

“Fuck.” He spits the word aloud, swipes at eyes that are a little too wet. 

The truth is, Javier loves you. He has for a long time. 

The thought of a life without you is absolutely unbearable. After that awful experience with that fucking bomb, Javier thinks that he wouldn’t survive it. 

He definitely wouldn’t if he knew that it was all his fault.

Javier takes a deep, bracing breath and goes over the facts, one by one, in his mind. 

Fact: He’s done with Los Pepes. That’s a good thing, really, for him and for you. Let Trujillo do the dirty work. Colombia and its people are his fight, more than Javier’s, anyway. 

Fact: Javier won’t interfere in your friendship with Ana. For one thing, Arturo might not be aware of the connection between you. Maybe. Surely you have enough sense not to babble about your personal relationships with Ana’s stranger of a brother. 

Still, something sinks in Javier’s chest at the thought of you alone at Arturo’s house. 

He shakes the thought away, focusing on the task at hand.

Fact: Javier won’t be keeping any more secrets from you. Not ever again. At least, not once this one dies. 

And with that, Javier’s thoughts turn to you. He has the presence of mind to glance down at his watch. One hour and change since he’d last spoken to you. His heart sinks in his chest when he remembers how he’d left you, disconnecting your call in a volley of gunfire. Of course, he hadn’t had much choice, running for his life like that, but still, you must be frantic with worry. 

He knows he would be. Javier pushes away memories of your smoking crater of an apartment and exits the Bronco on shaking legs. 

His only thought is to get to you. 

* * *

“Ears.” 

You bite back a furious sigh, whipping around to pin Torres with a deathly glare. You still haven’t been able to identify the voice that had put the hit out for Javi, and it’s driving you mad. “Torres, if you fucking interrupt -”

“There’s somebody here to see you,” Torres interjects softly. His eyes are gentle, still concerned. 

Your heart leaps in your chest, and you slam your earphones to your shoulders, jumping to your feet with a force that sends your chair tumbling from behind you. 

You don’t fucking care, because Javi’s waiting for you, peering hesitantly around the edge of the office door.

Oh, god, oh, god. He’s standing there, sweaty and disheveled, his face a little too pale, his expression dark and pinched with worry, but your heart soars at the sight of him, because he’s here, and he’s okay.

Your eyes lock, and you hardly have the sense to yank your headphones from your neck before you’re flying, careering through the office with absolutely zero sense of decorum, catapulting yourself into his waiting arms with all the speed your body can muster.

Javi catches you with a soft little ooph, like you’ve knocked the breath from him, absorbing the force of your assault by spinning you in a wide circle in an effort to avoid stumbling to the floor. 

Somebody, Torres maybe, shuts the office door behind you, but you don’t fucking care. You’re clinging to Javi for dear life, burying your face in his sweaty blue button up and choking back tears of relief. 

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, Javi, Javi, Javi,” you’re babbling over and over. It’s like your brain has clicked back offline, and once again, all you can think is his name, suffused this time with profound, staggering, heart-wrenching relief that he’s here, that he’s safe in your arms - or rather, that he’s safe with you in his - solid and warm and strong and _alive._

He clings to you just as tightly, just as desperately, nuzzling his nose in your hair and wrapping his arms around you with enough force to bruise. You’ll gladly bear it, though, the subtle pain of him pressing against your skin, marking your body even days later, reminding you that by some precious miracle, you hadn’t lost him.

He’s murmuring into your curls, a bastardization of English and Spanish, and you know by that alone that he’d been just as shaken as you, just as afraid. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he breathes over and over, along with, _“mi reina, mi alma, mi amada,_ it’s alright, we’re alright. Never again. I promise you. I promise.” 

You’re not sure what he’s saying or what he’s promising. You don’t fucking care, as long as he’s here.

After an eternity, you pull away, pinning him with a wide-eyed, wet stare. 

God, he’s beautiful. 

“You scared the shit out of me,” you accuse in a hoarse, trembling voice. One hand comes to bat half-heartedly at his chest, a teasing little gesture to prove to yourself, more than to him, that things are really okay.

Javi catches your cheeks in gentle hands, presses a soft kiss on your forehead that forces you to close your eyes and draw a deep, shaking breath. “You saved my life today,” he confesses against your skin, and that simple statement breaks you anew, sends fresh tears tracking down your cheeks. 

Javi wipes them away with his thumbs, and you huff a shattered little laugh. How is it that you’re always weeping all over this man, and he still manages to care so deeply for you? 

Christ, you’re a fucking basket case.

“Ears,” Javi’s voice is quiet, drawing you from your self recrimination with gentle reassurance. His eyes are red rimmed, warm and concerned. “Let’s go home, yeah?”

“I can’t.” Your voice comes out as a strangled whine, snotty and immature, but fuck, you can’t help it. “I - I haven’t ID’d the voice yet,” you explain, sniffing a little and clearing your throat, forcing yourself to sound like the goddamned professional that you are. You blink up at Javi, willing him to understand. “We’ve got to catch the guys who had the hit out for you, Javi. You’re not safe until we do.”

“Ears, baby,” Javi sighs deeply, his fingers twitching like he’s not sure what to do with his hands. He settles for scrubbing at his cheeks, a gesture that you recognize as Javi’s ultimate tell. He’s stressed nearly beyond his limits, and your heart stutters at the realization. “Those guys aren’t going to be a problem anymore, _mi alma,”_ he says, looking somewhere in the vicinity of his boots. “I - I took care of it, okay?”

Oh. 

_Oh._

You reach for his hand, squeezing reassurance, something swooping in your chest at his words. You hate to see Javi upset about taking a life, but goddammit, you cannot deny the profound relief you’re feeling at his admission, and the little spark of fierce vindication that revels in their deaths. 

Fuck them. 

“Okay, baby,” you say, and Javi nods a little, folding you back into his chest so that your head rests beneath his chin. He holds you there for a long moment, softer this time, gentler, and you just revel in the feeling of curling against his body. 

There’s nowhere on earth that you feel safer, happier, more alive.

“Come on,” you whisper after a long moment, and Javi draws away, something reluctant, almost sad in his expression. His eyes refuse to meet yours, but he clings to you hand, and you squeeze him again, a subtle reminder that you’re here, that you’re in this for the long run, for the good and the bad and the ugly.

His lips twitch at that, just the tiniest uptick to indicate that he’s received your message for what it is, and something lightens in you. You duck back toward the office door, taping at the glass with your index finger to catch Torres’ attention. 

“Leaving,” you mouth, pointing exaggeratedly toward the embassy exit, and he nods to you, looking relieved to see you go.

You turn back to see Javi staring at you. His brow is furrowed deeply, his tongue pressed to his lips in that adorable expression of deep contemplation, his eyes glittering darkly with some emotion that you can’t possibly name. 

“I’m free,” you say gently, nudging his shoulder to spur him out of his funk. “Think you can drive us home?”

Javi blinks, looking down at you with eyes that are damn near glowing. More of that strange, contemplative emotion seems to swamp him, and you wonder if it might be guilt. 

Well, fuck that. 

You pull him toward the front entrance, lightening your voice as much as you’re able, doing everything you can to drag him out of his head. 

Dammit, you need him with you. You need him now. 

“Come on, baby,” you say, shooting him an impish grin that you hope meets your eyes. You lean in, leering up at him with as must suggestion dripping from your tone as you can generate. “I have a fierce need, Peña,” you whisper sharply, “For you to remind me just how alive you are. Understand?”

Javi’s lips curl into a lopsided smirk. His grip tightens against yours. “Reading you loud and clear, babe,” he answers quietly, but there’s a glint in his eye that hadn’t been there before.

You count it as a win. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so a big canon deviation here. Instead of going to Bill Stechner for help, the Castaño brothers just decide to take matters into their own hands and send Javi a message. End game is, Javi never learns that it’s Stechner who set him up with Los Pepes in the first place. 
> 
> Also, dude. So much foreshadowing here. So. Much. Foreshadowing. 
> 
> Okay, kiddos. Carry on!


End file.
